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The Silver Tsunami is no longer a vague threat
lurking out at sea. It began slamming into shore
in 2011, when the baby boomers started turning
65, and has been shaking the foundations of retirement
planning ever since. Boomers swept up in this demographic
shift have experienced significant changes in
their relationships with those around them, including
their families and their advisors.

Many boomers now find themselves in the unfamiliar
role of providing financial and emotional support for
both aging parents and children struggling to achieve
financial independence.

Nearly half of Americans in their 40s and 50s (47 percent)
have a parent age 65 or older and are either raising
young children or supporting a grown child, according
to a study released last year by Pew Research. Approximately
15 percent are providing financial support to
both an aging parent and a child.

As these pressures mount, many boomers are increasingly
turning to their advisors for support—
and it isn’t limited to financial advice.

“I have conversations with clients about
the challenges of being in the sandwich
generation almost on a daily basis,” says
Thomas Froehlich, president and CEO of
Froehlich Financial Group in Spring Lake
Heights, N.J. “Most of my clients are in their
50s, and that’s the age when we’re all faced
with it. You’ve got the kids’ college, you have
your parents and between all of that you’ve got to worry
about your own retirement. ‘Will I be able to retire?
How long will my money last? What’s my lifestyle going
to be like?’ It’s very challenging.”

And he should know. He experienced it firsthand.

Building experience the hard way

Froehlich’s mother got sick first. She was living in the
two-story house where he grew up, which was slowly
falling into disrepair. Froehlich and his siblings sold the
house, pooled their money and bought a mother/daughter
property where his sister and her husband moved in
with their mother and took on the caregiving role. They
agreed that Froehlich, who had twin teenage boys at
home, would take care of the money management side
of things due to his professional background.

Watching his sister and her husband care for his
mother gave Froehlich a whole new respect for them
and others in that position. “That’s one of the most
stressful things on a marriage that you could deal with,”
he says. “It’s hard enough to be married and maintain
a strong relationship while working, raising kids and
everything else going on. And if you’re the spouse, it’s
not even your mother. I told my brother-in-law, I will
love and respect him forever for the work he did for my
mom.”

Several years after his mother passed away, his father,
who lived in Florida with Froelich’s stepmom, became ill.
“So now I’m flying up and back and dad gets worse
and worse and eventually he’s in hospice. He was in
hospice for about three weeks. It wasn’t financially
devastating for me since I own my own company and I
can bring a laptop and phone and work from wherever.
But imagine if it was someone who had a real job. How
do you take off time and go sit with your dad every day
while he expires?”

Beyond the logistics and financial hardships, Froelich
also recalls the emotional toll the process took on him.
“Personally, it’s a very, very tough experience to watch
somebody you love wither away and die,” Froehlich
says.

Looking back, he believes these experiences have
helped him better understand how to help clients who
are going through similar trials.

“Advisors have to have empathy; they have to be caring
and giving people,” he says. “Because it’s not only
about the money. And if it is only about the money,
I think they’re in the wrong business. And it comes
across that way to the client, I guarantee it.”

The light of understanding

“I think advisors really have to know their clients in
a different way than they’ve ever done before,” says
Lisa Gray, founder and managing
member of graymatter
Strategies LL C, a consultancy
in Richmond, Va. for families
and their advisors.

In addition to providing
traditional financial advice,
she says, boomer clients are
now relying more heavily on
their advisor for emotional
support. Advisors “need to
learn to listen much better, instead of just touting their
firm’s credentials or capabilities.”

Advisors who don’t understand generational views of
the world and the dynamics of each family are “functioning
in the dark,” Gray says. She recommends that
advisors take the time to discuss retirees’ assumptions
about the rest of their lives and uncover what younger
people may be expecting from their parents.

A recent study of single-family offices by the Wharton
Global Family Alliance cites non-financial components
as one of the key drivers of wealth performance.
“If you have a family that’s disagreeing among themselves,
they’re going to have difficulty making important
decisions about investments,” Gray says. “But
when you have consensus and engagement, they’re
going to make much better decisions and they’re going
to be a much better client for you as an advisor.”

When family relationships combine with finances,
a variety of issues and tensions can arise, Gray says.
Battles for control and power plays within the family
dynamic can be particularly damaging, she notes, and
it’s important that advisors help their clients navigate
these potentially volatile areas.

“Control is a delusion,” she tells clients. “You cannot
control what your kids are going to do with the
money you leave them. You cannot. You might as well
stop fooling yourself. What you can do is influence
them. You can share your values with them. You can
understand their viewpoint and learn to speak their
language.”
She says many boomer parents struggle to let go of
the financial reins and fear their kids will make irresponsible
decisions with their inheritance, but “those
are assumptions you’re making. You’ve never talked to
them about it. You’re the one who raised them, so give
them some credit for being smart people and coming
from smart people. They might have some ideas that
you haven’t thought of. They might surprise you."

Advisors who help clients through these tough and
personal conversations are rewarded with a higher
degree of trust, she says.

"When you have a real high-level
trust relationship with
a client and you’ve been
almost part of their family,
you’re making an effort and
building a relationship with
these younger generations.
You’re setting yourself up
for a very satisfying second
half of your career. And
you’re also going to feel
like you’ve made a real
difference in the lives of
that entire family.”

Tough love

“We focus on the money, because
that’s our domain as advisors, but
it’s about more than that,” says
Mari Adam, CFP, president of
Adam Financial
Associates in Boca Raton, Fla.

Like Froehlich, Gray says she
relies on her own personal experiences
to help clients with their
relationships and conversations
about money. Over the years, she’s come to learn that
helping clients sometimes means initiating tough
conversations.

While she acknowledges that wanting to take care
of children is “just the nature of being a parent,” Adam
says she began noticing a growing pattern among
boomer clientele who were financially enabling their
grown children and putting their own financial futures
in jeopardy in the process.

“I think as boomer parents, we have grown up in a
climate where we do tend to be more enabling,” she
says. “We tend to want to do everything for our kids
and I think we have done them a disservice.”

At first, she was uncomfortable bringing this issue
up with clients and feared she was “butting in.” But
eventually, she says she decided, “You know what? This
is our job, because it’s hurting our clients.”

She has come to understand the importance of “helping parents
learn how to say no, and to evaluate the needs of the
grown kids so they feel comfortable saying no. We
don’t want to see them use their own money to turn
grown children who should be financially responsible
into people who are no longer able to care for themselves.”
She advises clients to carefully consider requests
from grown children. If it’s an emergency and they
need medical care or they are going through a divorce
and need some temporary help, then it may be something
to look at. “But don’t continually pay for
a lifestyle for someone that they cannot pay
for on their own. Because then it becomes an
expectation that you’re going to continue giving
them the money.”

One of Adam’s clients is over 70 and would
like to retire, but continues to work to bolster
her retirement funds after years of helping her
children financially. And while Adam wishes
thing were different, she says, “She’s getting
closer to having a good retirement because we
finally stepped in and started this discussion.
If we had not done that, she would be in a much worse
situation. It really is a great feeling to know [clients are]
where they are now because we did certain things. As
an advisor, there’s nothing better.”

A good advisor

Froehlich says age and experience have given him
perspective that he lacked as a younger advisor. Despite
his busy schedule, he makes the time each week to take
his two Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers, Charlie
and Lexie, out for pet therapy sessions, where they visit
local schools and spend time with clients in rehab centers,
nursing homes and hospice facilities. ”It’s a nice
feeling to be able to help [sandwich generation clients]
on a personal level, because I’ve lived it,” he says.

Successful advisors adapt to shifts in their clients'
lives, Gray says, and connect with them on an emotional
level.

“Advisors are a dime a dozen,” says Gray. “But a
good advisor is empathetic. A good advisor really
cares about that family, and realizes that each family
is unique because each person is unique and each
group of generational dynamics is unique. A good
advisor is rare.”

About the Author

Paul Wilson is the managing editor of ProducersWEB.com and Retirement Advisor magazine. He lives with his wife and two sons in Denver and can be reached at pwilson@summitpronets.com or on Twitter at @paulwatpweb. Please contact him if you would like to submit content or if you have any other ques... More